From: Paul Reinerfelt <paulr@cs.lth.se>
Reply-To: paulr@cs.lth.se
To: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Subject: Cognitive dinosaurs?
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 17:13:12 +0200 (CEST)
Hi!
I'm taking a course on Cognitive Evolution at our Cognitive Science
department.
As I was rather disturbed by their portrayal of dinosaurs as rather
inferior
lizards I volunteered to write a paper on the proper place of dinosaurs in
the
evolution of cognitive abilites.
Now, the problem seems to be that nothing have been done in this field
(something I refuse to believe). I can only find references that are
twentyfive
years old (like Hopson (1977), "Relative brain size and behavior in
archosaurian reptiles"). Someone must have done something on the evolution
of
the brain and senses that covers dinosaurs or speculated about their
behaviour
since then, but I can't find them.
So, can anyone help me out? I'm looking for references to books or articles
about either the brain size of dinosaurs compared to other animals or the
sensory systems of dinosaurs (preferably comparing with other groups of
animals).
On the question of behaviour, I'll just add one question that came up while
we
were brainstorming on this; "Does pack-hunting require different cognitive
abilities than solitary hunting and if so, what?" Any input on this as well
as
what information exists on pack-hunting among dinosaurs is greatly
appriciated.
Thanks in advance,
/Paul Reinerfelt
Ph.D. student of Computer Science in Lund, Sweden
http://www.cs.lth.se/home/Paul_Reinerfelt/